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Empathy Fatigue Paper

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Counselors are faced with emotional stress every day. Without proper self-care, counselors will experience empathy fatigue. Empathy fatigue is a serious condition which impairs counselors. Impaired counselors are unable to fulfill the responsibilities of their helping role. Practicing regular self-care is crucial to the well-being of the counselor and therefore, the counselee. Centering Prayer is a form of self-care. This paper will discuss literature on the topic of Centering Prayer and explore two studies on the effectiveness of Centering Prayer in relieving stress. This information will be applied to preventing empathy fatigue in counselors.

Research shows that counselors suffer empathy fatigue (Stebnicki, 2007). This condition “results from a state of emotional, mental, physical, and occupational exhaustion that occurs as the counselors’ own wounds are continually revisited by their clients’ life stories of chronic illness, disability, trauma, grief and loss” (Stebnicki, 2007, p. 318). Empathy fatigue is a state of counselor impairment. Conversely, the soul of the helping relationship is wellness. …show more content…
Centering Prayer is a spiritual discipline. It is based on surrendering. According to Ferguson, Willemsen, & Castaneto (2009), the technique of Centering Prayer is a way of surrendering and receiving God’s love, presence, and healing power. Furthermore, Ferguson et al. (2009) describe Centering Prayer as “a healing response to an identified problem of everyday stress” (p.305). The idea is that putting oneself “into the arms of a loving God” (Ferguson et al. 2009, p. 305) will heal one’s wounds. The healing of these past wounds is believed to lessen one’s likelihood of being negatively influenced by stress (Ferguson et al.

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